The lair

Frowning, he listened to the High Priestess’s reply, her eyes focused on the only male in her group. “I was once amongst Inaea’s followers, too, and I still enjoy ties and influence enough for my interference to bear weight. Plus, after the assembly heard about the report you gave me, they quickly moved their minds away from acquittal and bequeathed on me the jurisdiction of the prosecutor.”

The young girl next to him, the only priestess who had not joined in on the cheering kept expressing her doubt about the undertaking. She appeared to have been born outside of humanity’s big cities. It was not so much her language as the clothing she wore beneath the plates. Women of the cities wore tunics whereas villagers needed more functional attire. Her skin was youthful yet too dark, almost as tanned as his. She looked more like a foreigner or a metic than an Ashlandic woman. “Are you sure they will not turn on me, once we get the abomination?”

“Hemma,” she spoke in appeal. “You are safe, be sure of that. The man we are hunting is of royal blood, it is true. He is one of the remaining descendants of the lineage that produced the human kings before we abolished the monarchy. But he has forfeited all goods, including his name.”

Before daybreak they had hushed along the northern border of the coppice, moving towards the east in between spruces and bushes, eschewing brushwood. As to not stumble accidentally on some magical beast, they avoided glades and glid between palisades of trunks. Luckily, the earth was dewy or else it would have been much harder to hide a party of eight and one but Varion knew so far from the center they had nothing to fear from them. As long as they kept moving along the border, they’d be fine and a year from now, when it was his turn to surmount the forest, Varion would have no excuse anymore. 

He tried not to think of it and beckoned instead to the High Priestess. Whence Daria knew how to find Crod’s lot was beyond him and after telling her this, she pointed her chin to Hemma, who scowled deeply.

They found them easily. Hemma was a gifted forest guide and had pointed out multiple vantage zones where Crod’s Lot used to pry for caravans and merchants without protection. Not far away, usually embedded into a slope their lair could be found. The first and closest to the border was empty, so were the second and third. It occurred to Hemma then that they might’ve retracted deeper into the woods and she was right. Spotted from afar, the bandits had blown the horns of alarm.

“I was the one who urged my sister to join them. I was the one who told her Crod’s ties to the officials will protect us but once Persilaus visited… Crod sold my sister and in so doing he appointed me the dealer who will sell their lives in exchange for justice.”

Varion refrained from inquiring any further as his own nervosity was now at peril’s peak. The last time he had hunted bandits was more than twelve summers ago and they had not been disciplined or trained. Crod was said to be a deserting officer himself, a former acquaintance to Persilaus even.